


i'll fend attention off, i keep to myself

by orphan_account



Category: Nothing Much to Do
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-05
Updated: 2015-01-05
Packaged: 2018-03-05 13:57:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 698
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3122720
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ursula has been behind a camera ever since she can remember.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i'll fend attention off, i keep to myself

**Author's Note:**

> written for the prompt 'watching', day 5 of the lovely little ficlets 31 day challenge.
> 
> mentions of bea/ben and balth/pedro.

Ursula has been behind a camera ever since she can remember. Seven years old and camera shy, desperately trying to escape having her photo taken at birthdays and weddings and Christmas; she eventually ended up with the camera in her hands, her parents resigned to her stubborn refusal, and it led her here.

She’s lucky, she guesses, that her friends aren’t camera shy—even Balthazar, who’s the most reserved of them all, bar herself— and that they’re all, for the most part, sincere in front of one. It gives her films an authenticity that she doesn’t see in high-budget documentaries; sure, her films are not of the quality she wants to achieve, but she has a foundation to build her style upon and it's that authenticity. She likes capturing people, she likes capturing moments of real, human emotion; she thinks that one day she might study psychology, but right now she’s keeping her mind set on photography.

Her camera has become something like a part of her, an extra limb; to the extent that people don’t even question it.

It gives her a lot of footage to go through; it’s exhausting work, but the payoff makes it worthwhile.

But, sometimes, this freedom to film whatever she pleases, something her friends’ confidence allows her, makes her feel intrusive, watching it back.

For the longest time, they all knew how Bea and Ben felt about each other, but she saw it in detail. Saw how angry Bea looked sometimes, that she liked this dumb boy who stomped on her heart without even knowing. She saw how in awe of her Ben was sometimes. Most of the time, really. She saw how they suited they were.

It was also how she found out about Balthazar’s thing for Pedro; they don’t call it a crush, maybe because the word doesn’t really fit; it’s Balthazar’s quiet—casual, as Balthazar had once said— affection for the guy who asked him about that piece he was playing in the corner on his guitar back in Year Ten, the guy who had looked so amazed when he said he’d written himself. But his eyes linger sometimes, sometimes he smiles a little too directly at him, and Ursula catches that, first on camera and then off.

She catches more positive things, like Hero’s change throughout the past few years, how she’s gone from a little timid and a little too sweet, someone who people look at with ulterior motives in mind, to someone who challenges the bullshit she’s faced with, who’s a bit more wary, a bit more cynical, but no less kind.

She sees contrast, the different ways people act around different people; Meg smiling and giggling with Robbie; Meg grinning and laughing with them, her and Hero and Bea.

She sees John Donaldson staring right at the camera lense, and she sees him avoid it, sees him lurk in the shadows at a party, or in a doorway, or on the edge of a football pitch. She wonders how she didn’t know, how she’s meant to be observant and she didn’t even notice that.

She sees Pedro, and she doesn’t know what to make of him anymore. But one day, maybe, she will.

She catches them all together, silly dramatic teenagers who’ve made a fragile kind of peace, rolling down hills, praying frisbee, eating finger food while Balthazar plays the Game Of Thrones theme tune for Bea. Bea rests against Ben’s chest, Hero makes conversation with John, Verges chats to Meg, who seems charmed. It’s all okay, the calm after a storm.

She feels an awful lot, editing; she thinks she maybe shouldn’t, that maybe she should look at her footage objectively, distance herself from it slightly, but there’s this fondness, and this anger, and frustration and nostalgia and love, and she can’t let that go. So she puts it into the footage instead.

She wonders sometimes, what she looks like. For the most part, she’s glad that she doesn’t have to see herself through a lense; she’s glad that her emotions aren’t on record. But they’re in there, if you look, there in the things she’s left out and the things she’s kept in. 


End file.
